Students recognized for academic excellence, research ability, leadership
BY ANDREW VOWLES
Custom-built diets and “rocks for crops” are the research interests of two U of G students who have received 2005 Julie Payette-Science and Engineering Research Canada (NSERC) Research Scholarships.
Karen Eny, a fourth-year student in applied nutrition, and Kim Schneider, a master's student in land resource science, were among 24 Canadians awarded this year's scholarships for academic excellence, research ability and potential, and leadership and communication skills.
Named for Julie Payette, a Canadian astronaut and member of the NSERC council, the one-year $25,000 scholarships are offered to the best master's candidates reviewed by eight discipline-based selection committees within NSERC.
Schneider, now completing the first year of her graduate degree, works with Prof. Peter Van Straaten on the use of local mineral resources as fertilizers. Dubbed “rocks for crops,” the concept is intended to help smallholder farmers in developing countries improve agricultural practices and attain food self-sufficiency.
She hopes to conduct fieldwork in Brazil, including the possible use of a fungus — already employed to make citric acid — to break down phosphate rock material into nutrients available to plants.
Schneider, who attended a conference in Brazil last year with her supervisor, says farmers and researchers from a number of developing countries are interested in the concept.
“Peter's passion for contributing to sustainable agriculture and increasing food security — thereby alleviating poverty in many situations — has really inspired me to take on this project,” she says. “I was also attracted to working with him because of his strong social conscience and drive to make a difference.”
Schneider studied environmental sciences at Guelph through the co-operative education program. Her co-op assignments included a work term at Health Canada's pest management regulatory agency, where she helped analyze the registration process for low-risk pesticides. During another placement, she conducted soil toxicity tests at Stantec, an environmental engineering firm, and presented results at a national conference on aquatic toxicity.
Schneider's interest in environmental issues was sparked during the Shad Valley Program she attended while in high school in Oakville. Here in Guelph, she also served as an intern for the Ignatius Farm CSA, a shared farming co-operative based at the Ignatius Jesuit Centre of Guelph. She hopes to eventually work in sustainable agriculture here or abroad.
Eny, now completing her undergraduate degree in applied nutrition, will begin a combined dietetic internship-master of science program through St. Michael's Hospital and the University of Toronto in the fall. She's interested in learning more about interactions among genes and metabolism and nutrition, information that may eventually see one-size-fits-all diets replaced by nutrition programs tailored to individuals.
Investigating the genetic basis for individual responses to diet is the theme of research by Eny's prospective master's supervisor in Toronto, Ahmed El-Sohemy, holder of a Canada Research Chair in Nutrigenomics. Working with him last year, she studied the genetics of rheumatoid arthritis and lupus and links between disease susceptibility and nutrition.
Earlier, she worked at the Hospital for Sick Children, collaborating on a study of the effects of folate and vitamin B12 on cognition in elderly patients.
In 2003, Eny won a scholarship from the Heart and Stroke Foundation to study regional variations in rates of cardiovascular disease and the distribution of fast-food outlets in Ontario. That work occurred at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Studies at Sunnybrook and Women's College Health Sciences Centre in Toronto.
While at high school in Thornhill, Eny was chosen for the SciTech program, a summer research camp for gifted students at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. There, she studied sedentary lifestyles and barriers to physical activity.
Allowing that she and her Guelph roommates could probably practise more of what she preaches, Eny confesses: “I'm the one who buys the chips.”
